


Us Against the World

by aretia



Series: If You Want Something Done Right [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Alcohol, Almost Kiss, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Anachronisms, Discorporation (Good Omens), Drunkenness, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Finally, Getting Together, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Injury, Love at First Sight, Minor Violence, More tags to be added, Other, Pen Pals, Pining, Religion, Rivalry, Roleswap, Slow Burn, Swearing, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), okay medium burn because author is impatient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24799159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aretia/pseuds/aretia
Summary: Before a certain serpent and principality ever met, Beelzebub and Gabriel took them off the Earth assignment and stationed themselves in their place. Now, the bosses of Heaven and Hell are the ineffectual Earth agents, bumbling their way into falling in love over six thousand years.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Series: If You Want Something Done Right [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793692
Comments: 84
Kudos: 63





	1. All the Days Had Been Nice

In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, there was a demon in the form of a serpent who hadn't made enough trouble for one day, and there was an angel standing atop the gate, fretting and wringing his hands. 

A different angel and demon pair stood on top of the storm clouds above Eden, watching them. The demon adjusted the red sash over their black robe. As the leaders of their respective sides, Lord Beelzebub and Archangel Gabriel had decided that it was in both of their best interests to check in on Earth and make sure that everything was going according to plan. 

The serpent, having just finished the first temptation of humanity, slithered up the wall towards the unsuspecting angel. His ankle was exposed by his robes, and the serpent bared his fangs, poised to strike. 

“It looks like your poor angel is about to meet a grim end,” said Beelzebub.

“Mhm,” said Gabriel, giving a curt nod.

“You aren’t going to do anything about it? Try to save one of your own?” Beelzebub prompted him.

“I must not interfere with the Great Plan,” Gabriel said.

“Doesn’t seem very angelic, to let someone die, does it?” Beelzebub commented. They watched his face for a reaction, but his frown was set as if carved in stone. His jaw was so chiseled that it might as well be, they noticed despite themselves. Shaking their head to snap themselves out of it, they returned their attention to the wall below. 

Beelzebub soon realized that the serpent’s intentions were not what they thought. He didn’t lash out at the angel’s ankle, but coiled up beside him. He wasn’t opening his mouth to bite, but to speak.

“It’s even worse than we thought,” said Beelzebub. “He’s not trying to kill him. He’s trying to  _ strike up a conversation _ with him.” 

“What?! That’s unthinkable,” Gabriel sputtered. “Angels and demons are not supposed to  _ fraternize _ with each other.” 

Beelzebub raised their eyebrow and shot him a pointed glance.

“This is strictly for business purposes. It’s not fraternizing,” Gabriel insisted.

“Sure,” said Beelzebub, unconvinced.

“We have to stop them. Call them back to head office,” Gabriel urged.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to interfere with the Great Plan,” Beelzebub said mockingly.

“This isn’t interfering with it. This is preserving it,” said Gabriel, pressing on in obvious ignorance of Beelzebub's sarcasm. “If those two interact, it could throw a wrench into the whole thing.” 

“Whatever you say, Archangel,” Beelzebub sighed wearily, not bothering to ask what a wrench was. Then, their voice took on a commanding tone, projecting down to the demon on Earth. “Demon Crawly, report back to Hell immediately.” The serpent slunk down from the wall, and the ground swallowed him up in a burst of embers. 

“And you, Aziraphale,” Gabriel ordered, making the nervous principality look up with a start. “Meet me back at head office. We need to talk about your flaming sword.”

While they were conducting the meetings with the angel and demon who had almost met in Eden, Beelzebub and Gabriel independently came to the same conclusion:  _ If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.  _ That was how they ended up taking the Serpent of Eden and the Guardian of the Eastern Gate off the Earth assignment, and stationing themselves on Earth in their place. Even if that meant promoting their wayward operatives to a higher, or in Hell’s case,  _ lower _ office than they deserved, it was a small price to pay in order to put someone competent in charge of keeping the Earth project on its course. 

If only the forces of Heaven and Hell had someone competent at their disposal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I have no idea when this thing will update. I've been sitting on the first chapter for a while, but I have other projects going on right now. I'll announce when I expect the update schedule to be more regular. Until then, if you want to see more of this, please comment and subscribe xoxoxo


	2. Just the Locals

The Earth experiment had failed.

Despite Gabriel’s best efforts to inspire virtue in the humans, he only saw violence at every turn. There was nothing to do for it, other than reset the experiment and start over.

People gathered to watch Noah and his family march the animals to the ark, and Gabriel stood among the crowd. They deserved it. Of course they did. They were wicked people. He tried to remind himself that, even as he watched them marvel at the animals like they would at a parade, their faces alight with wonder, blissfully ignorant of the fate that was to come.

He spotted a dark figure skulking around near the hull of the ark, and walked over to investigate. As he approached, he recognized the small silhouette and black mop of hair belonging to the Prince of Hell.

“What are you doing here?” Gabriel said scornfully. 

“Same thing as you,” Beelzebub replied. “I’m making sure everything goes according to plan.”

“And what plan would that be?” Gabriel inquired.

Dark delight flashed across Beelzebub’s features before their face returned to its usual impassive expression. “I’ve ensured safe passage for the lesser animals,” Beelzebub explained, tapping their fingertips together. “The ones that your lot didn’t see fit to put on the list along with the beloved giraffes and unicorns. Termites in the wood, ants in the food supply, mosquitoes in the humans’ sleeping quarters.”

“Why would you do that?” Gabriel asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Isn’t it obvious, feather-brain?” Beelzebub said, their singsong voice grating on his nerves. “My pests will drive those humans to the brink of sin by making their miserable existence on that ship even more unbearable. Not only that, but they will plague the new human civilization for generations to come.”

Gabriel slammed his hand against the hull, just above Beelzebub’s shoulder. The little demon didn’t flinch. He glowered down at them as he leaned into their space, pinning them against the ship. “It’s never going to work,” he said. “Those humans are virtuous.”

Beelzebub jabbed a finger into his sternum. “You try being _virtuous_ when your skin is aflame with mosquito bites and you’ve just stepped through a board rotted out by termites,” they retorted. 

“Your little bugs can’t cause that much damage,” Gabriel asserted. “Not when there’s only two of each of them.”

“Oh, that whole ‘two-by-two’ business is so reductive,” Beelzebub groaned. “There’s way more to ants than just male and female, you know. You can’t repopulate ants without a colony, so I thought, why not a thousand of them?”

“You can’t just _do_ that, Beelzebub,” Gabriel said desperately. “It goes against the--”

“The Great Plan?” they said, their voice dripping with derision. “Are you here to thwart me?” They tilted their chin forward on the word _thwart,_ which sparked a desire in him to curl his fingers around their bared throat, lift their small body up with one hand, and squeeze just tight enough to make them gasp.

Gabriel clenched his hand into a fist at his side instead. He pulled back from them, resisting the urge that had suddenly overcome him. He wasn’t going to let them tempt him, too. “No. I’m here on assignment. I’m supposed to watch over the ark until the waters rise.”

Beelzebub’s eyes lit up with a realization that he was already sure he did not like at all. “Oh, I see. You’re here to revel in the humans’ demise. That hardly sounds like an angelic thing to do.”

“I would never do such a thing,” Gabriel insisted. “It’s not reveling to be satisfied when justice is served to wrongdoers.” 

Beelzebub let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Is that what you call it?” they said. “Honestly, at first I would have thought this plan to kill all the humans came from my side, not yours.”

“It’s your side’s fault that we had to do this,” Gabriel replied. “You’re the ones tempting them to evil.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Beelzebub said. “Your side does all the evil for us.”

Gabriel drew in a deep breath. He felt his composure slipping, and he had to change tactics. “Isn’t this all a little beneath you?” he said.

“I’m a demon lord. Nothing is beneath me,” they said. “I’m the lowest of the low. No deed is too vile. If you think you’ve seen my worst, then brace yourself, because--”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that,” Gabriel said, waving his hand. “I don’t mean morally. I mean, what’s a demon lord doing here, on Earth, wreaking minor mischief? Don’t you have underlings for that?”

Beelzebub bristled, crossing their arms tightly across their chest. “No,” they sighed. “Crawly couldn’t be trusted, not after the way he was looking at that angel.” Gabriel wondered if the way Crawly looked at that angel bore any resemblance to the way Beelzebub looked at him now, their eyes flicking up to his face before darting away again. “Besides, don’t you have more important things to do, too, Archangel?”

“Of course I do. I have a really big assignment coming up,” Gabriel told them, because it was technically true. He did have a big assignment… in a couple of millennia. Until then, he was woefully under-scheduled, compared to the flurry of activity that he had enjoyed prior to the Earth’s creation. But if Beelzebub thought he was important, he didn’t want to give them any information to challenge that assumption. “Not that I’m going anywhere until I’ve made sure that you aren’t going to cause any more trouble.”

“Fine. My work here is done,” Beelzebub said. They tapped their foot and opened a portal to Hell, the ground belching lava and sparks. “You won’t be staying here too long either, not if you don’t want to get your robes wet.” They sunk down and disappeared below. A single raindrop fell, and sizzled on the scorched patch of earth they left behind.

One raindrop became many, and then became sheets of water crashing to the earth with a vengeance. The crowd of humans scattered in a frantic search for shelter that would soon prove futile. Gabriel shifted back and forth on his feet, stirring the water that had already pooled around his ankles. He didn’t have a word for what he was feeling, but there was no satisfaction in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [Melibe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melibe/pseuds/Melibe) for the ant conversation.


	3. Evil Contains the Seeds of Its Own Destruction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please be aware that I was raised atheist, and I will be referencing some religious things in this chapter, and my only reference for them is wikipedia. it might be blasphemous, but this is good omens fanfiction so you probably already knew that

“I want to sabotage Gabriel’s big assignment.” Beelzebub leaned back in their chair and propped their feet up on top of the expansive desk that took up most of their office in Hell. 

Crawly awkwardly leaned around Beelzebub’s feet to see their face. “Why’s that?” he said. 

“I just want to take his ego down a few notches,” Beelzebub said. They were still tormented by his supercilious voice saying that work on Earth was  _ beneath _ them, as if he thought he was better than them and could be the judge of that. As if he wasn’t bumbling around the planet doing the exact same thing. They wanted to show him that while they could prove their worth to him, they didn’t need to, because they had all the power they needed to crush him at any given opportunity.

“You want to knock some air out of that old windbag, be my guest,” Crawly said. “But what’s any of that got to do with me?”

“You’re going to help me do it.” Beelzebub phrased it like an order, carefully dodging around the admission that they needed help. “You’ve been behind some of Hell’s most heinous schemes, Crawly.”

“Crowley.”

“What?”

“My name’s Crowley. I changed it,” he said. “Didn’t you get my name change form? I only submitted it last century.”

“I never read any of that stuff. Dagon takes care of all that,” Beelzebub said with a dismissive wave of their hand. Still, it didn’t take a Lord of the Files to overwrite the file in their head labeled  _ Crawly _ and rename it  _ Crowley.  _ They were hardly in a position to give him a hard time about changing his name. They had changed their own a number of times before they settled on one after the Fall, and they would rip out the throat of anyone who dared to call them the name they had gone by Before. 

“Anyway, Crowley, give yourself some credit,” Beelzebub said. “Original sin, that one was a real winner with the big boss.”

“Eh, I wasn’t really trying to do anything with that one. If you ask me, it all got blown out of proportion,” Crowley said. “Besides, I don’t know if I have the skill set for this project of yours. I’m more of a tempter, not a saboteur.” He blinked, a rare sight, before adding, “You’re not trying to  _ tempt _ Gabriel, are you?”

“No,” Beelzebub snorted, although they made a mental note to attempt that at some point, just to see if they could. They didn’t want to make him Fall, because then they would have to see his appallingly sculpted face in Hell every day, and that was a torture that even Beelzebub wouldn’t think of inflicting on anyone. “I just want to make him taste failure. Shove his smug face into the stench of it.”

“Right then,” Crowley said, raising his eyebrows and glancing away, like the description was getting too vivid for his tastes. Beelzebub relished his discomfort. They didn’t exist to make anyone comfortable. “Do you even know what his big assignment is?”

They hadn’t a clue. Unlike the Ark plan, which had more leaks than the boat itself, this one seemed to be top-secret. “I have a few leads,” they said vaguely.

“You called me to this meeting, so I’m going to give you my advice,” said Crowley. “If you want to know what this assignment is, and how to sabotage it, you’re going to have to find out from the source.”

“How am I supposed to do that? He wouldn’t tell me if I asked,” Beelzebub said. “Angels don’t go around trusting demons.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t tell you directly, but you can still do your own reconnaissance,” Crowley suggested. “Get close to him. Find out how he thinks.”

“Ugh, why would I want to do that?” Beelzebub groaned. The prospect of spending more time with Gabriel was… not unpleasant, on its surface, but they knew how quickly he could wear out their patience.

“You don’t have to enjoy it,” said Crowley. “It’s just business. One of these days, he’ll complain about work, and then you’ll have your answer.”

“You know, Crowley, that is pretty devious.” They swung their legs down from the desk and stood up. “I knew I could count on you.”

“One last thing,” said Crowley. “Maybe I could come up to Earth with you? Not that you need any help, of course, but maybe I could provide a second set of eyes?”

“Nice try, but no. I need you here,” Beelzebub said. “Someone has to take care of all the administrative work in my absence.” They strode out of the office, leaving the door open. Behind them, they heard the shuffling of Crowley getting up out of the awful folding chair across from their desk and moving to sit down on their throne. “Don’t even think about it,” they called over their shoulder. 

~

Gabriel had been keeping himself busy. On top of his managerial duties in Heaven, and his projects on Earth, he had the increasingly common task of thwarting a demon. In practice, that usually consisted of playing games with them so that they were too distracted to do evil, and was admittedly the most interesting out of all his responsibilities. 

He didn’t need to sleep or eat, and yet it still felt like he never had enough time to get everything done. Still, he told himself that he liked being constantly overscheduled. He took on as many assignments as he could to pass the time, until his Big Assignment was only a few years away. 

He was taking what he considered to be a break, sprinkling blessings around at a party in Rome, when he sensed another ethereal presence in the crowd. It wasn’t difficult to spot the angel fidgeting awkwardly in the corner, but it was surprising to see him there, when he was supposed to be keeping Gabriel’s seat warm in his office.

“Aziraphale!” Gabriel greeted him with one of his beaming smiles, crossing the room to him. “What brings you here?”

“I was sent here to check on your preparations for the Annunciation,” Aziraphale said. “Head office wants to know if you need anything.”

“I am so glad you asked,” Gabriel said, clapping his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and leading him to sit down at a bench. “I’ll need about a hundred trumpets, and a holy spotlight or five, just to make sure I’m lit from all angles.” Aziraphale produced a scrap of paper from the sleeve of his robe and began to scribble furiously. “Then, I’m going to appear to Mary with all of my wings and eyes out, and deliver the message. Sound good?”

Aziraphale looked less than enthused. “Er… it sounds lovely, Gabriel,” he muttered. “But are you sure you want to make such a spectacle out of it? You don’t want to scare her.”

“That’s why I’ll start off with the standard angel greeting, ‘Be not afraid,’” said Gabriel. “Come on, Aziraphale, this is basic stuff.”

“Yes, well, while ‘Be not afraid’ might be traditional for angels, it’s not exactly a standard greeting among humans,” Aziraphale said. “Starting off with something like that gives them the impression that they  _ should _ be afraid.”

Gabriel frowned. Aziraphale had no business telling him how to do his assignment, and Gabriel didn’t understand why a human would be afraid when he explicitly told them not to be. But he wanted to make it sound like he valued Aziraphale’s opinion, so he said, “You think I should tone it down a bit?”

“Oh, no, I’m quite sure you know what’s best,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll put in the requisition for your spotlights.” The piece of paper disappeared in a flicker of light.

“So, how are things going upstairs?” asked Gabriel. “I haven’t been back in longer than I’d like, but things have just gotten so busy down here, you know how it is.” He didn’t want to admit that he had been spending almost as much time with a certain demon as he had on his assignments.

“It’s actually been dreadful without you there,” Aziraphale sighed. “I never realized how many angels wanted your attention all at once. Then I have to explain to them all that it’s just me, your assistant, filling in for you while you do important work on Earth. Quite a few of them threatened to rip my wings off if I didn’t get you on the line right away.” He shuddered with the memory. “Do you think you could come back, just for a little while, until things settle down?”

“Of course I can,” Gabriel said with a beneficent smile. “You’ve done a great job covering for me. As soon as I’m done with this assignment, I’ll be back to take over where you left off.”  _ And clean up the mess you’ve left behind _ , he thought to himself. He had to play the part of a supportive manager to Aziraphale’s face, but he doubted that the principality was any more competent as his assistant than he had been during his brief stint on Earth. “But I don’t want to leave you without any work to do.”

“Ah, well… I was wondering if I might do some work here on Earth,” Aziraphale suggested. “I thought that maybe the humans could use a softer touch.”

“Nonsense. Angels are not supposed to be  _ soft, _ ” Gabriel declared.

A servant passing by offered them a plate of oysters. Gabriel recoiled from the briny smell and slimy appearance of the molluscs. It was bad enough to be in such close proximity to gross matter that he could feel it tainting his celestial core, but the strangeness of things humans considered food bewildered him. He was even more horrified when Aziraphale took one. 

“Would you like to try one?” Aziraphale offered.

“Absolutely not. That’s the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” Gabriel said. 

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows as he slid the oyster into his mouth. “Seems a bit of a shame that the one who’s stationed on Earth is the one who can’t even appreciate what it has to offer,” he murmured under his breath.

“He’s right, you know,” said a familiar gruff voice. Gabriel and Aziraphale both jumped as they looked up to see Beelzebub, who had appeared beside their table, also holding an oyster. They sat down on the side of the bench next to Aziraphale, and trained their eyes on Gabriel. 

“What’s the point of being stuck here on Earth if you aren’t going to indulge a little?” They popped the oyster into their mouth whole, crunched down on it, and then turned to Aziraphale. “These are good, aren’t they?”

“Um, er, yes. Quite,” Aziraphale stammered. “But I don’t think you’re supposed to eat the shell…” 

Gabriel felt like he was rapidly losing control of the conversation. “Stay back, Aziraphale. I have a demon to smite,” he said in his most commanding tone.

Beelzebub giggled. “You wouldn’t waste your energy.”

“I think I had better leave you to it,” Aziraphale said nervously. “I’ll get to work on that requisition of yours, Gabriel. Toodle-oo!” He got up from the bench and stepped around a corner, out of sight of the humans, and vanished into thin air. 

Gabriel slammed his hands down on the table, leaning over it to bring his face close to Beelzebub’s. “You shouldn’t be here,” he hissed.

“What’s the matter, Archangel? Not happy to see me?” Beelzebub said. “I thought you still wanted your checkers rematch, after I trounced you the last thirty times.”

“Yes, but not in front of other angels,” Gabriel said in exasperation.

“He looked like a scatterbrain. I bet he’s already forgotten about it,” they said. They reached into the folds of their robe and pulled out a bag of checkers pieces, and set it down on the board that was painted on the table. “So, what’s this I hear about a requisition?”

“None of your business,” said Gabriel. He snatched the bag of pieces. “And give me that. I have to make sure it isn’t… weighted or something.”

“This isn’t dice, Gabriel,” Beelzebub teased him. “You have nothing to blame for your losses other than your own stupidity.”

“We’ll see about that,” Gabriel said as he laid out the pieces on the board. No matter what madness awaited him in Heaven, or on the other side of this assignment, Beelzebub’s taunts and jabs always felt predictable. As long as their regular meetings kept on happening like this, he felt like he could let himself relax and settle into the familiar routine. 

~

The more Gabriel thought about it, the more he realized that Aziraphale was right. He didn’t want to screw up his one big assignment by going overboard. So he canceled the requisition and rethought his strategy. He wrote letters to Mary about the child she was going to bear, and tied them to the legs of pigeons, and directed the birds to fly to her house. 

He wasn’t done with his mission until he observed that it had worked. The pigeons never returned to him, and as far as he could tell, nothing had changed about the household to indicate that they had received his message. So he sent more pigeons, over the course of a few weeks, until he found out what was holding them up.

Walking along the street one day, he saw a pigeon struggling in the dirt. Compelled by an angelic instinct to help animals, he crouched down in front of it, before he even realized it was one of his own. It had a string tied to its leg, but the letter it used to contain was now a smoldering residue of ash, and a flame still licked its way up the bird’s body.

Gabriel pinched the bird’s leg to extinguish the flame, healed it with a miracle, and released it. His glare darkened as he watched the pigeon fly away. He knew who had done this, almost as if they had signed their name on it. 

Sending the pigeons was leaving too much to chance. He needed to take all uncertainty out of the equation. So he went to Mary’s house and delivered the message himself, no spotlights or trumpets, just Gabriel in his human form with a single pair of wings to indicate his angelic nature. The assignment that had been on his calendar for the past two thousand and some years didn’t feel as climactic as he’d expected it to, because his mind was preoccupied with other things. 

Once he was done, he set off to find Beelzebub. 

Beelzebub, who used to make a habit of appearing wherever he was, had made themselves scarce. With the renewed attention he got from Heaven after completing the assignment, it wasn’t easy for him to carve out time to search for a demon. When he eventually found them, they were wandering through the desert. 

“Beelzebub!” he called to get their attention. They warily moved closer to him. “What is the meaning of this?” He held up the string he had taken from the bird for clarification.

“Ah. I see you found the last pigeon I intercepted,” Beelzebub said. “I didn’t kill them, you know. Just burned the letters.”

“I’m not talking about the damn birds,” Gabriel said. “Why did you try to ruin the mission I’ve worked so hard for?”

“Doesn’t feel so good to be the one getting thwarted, does it?” Beelzebub snapped back.

“I still don’t understand. I thought we had some kind of mutual respect going on.”

“Then that was your mistake for trusting a demon,” Beelzebub said, with their mirthless laugh. “I only got close to you so that I could sabotage your assignment.”

That admission felt like a lightning bolt coming down from the sky, striking him through to his core and turning the sand beneath his feet to glass. Gabriel usually commanded the lightning, but he had no control over the storm that raged inside him at the thought that Beelzebub’s reliable presence at his side was all a ruse.

“Well, it didn’t work,” Gabriel said, once he had forced his mouth to move again, even though the rest of his body felt frozen like a statue. “The letters were uninspired. Head office liked my new idea for the Annunciation so much that they’ve given me another assignment, an even bigger one, and this time I’m going to make sure you don’t find out anything about it. So, thanks, Beelzebub. Your sabotage only made me more successful.”

“Don’t you get it?” Beelzebub snarled, with more fervor than he expected to see from them. “They’re using you.”

“I live to serve,” Gabriel replied. He found that he had to raise his already loud voice to hear himself over the winds that swept across the desert. A sandstorm had kicked up, and the cloud loomed behind Beelzebub, casting them in a red glow. 

“So you’re just going to keep taking on all these assignments, and running yourself into the ground?” Beelzebub said. “I can tell you’re only doing this to try to regain your power as an Archangel, but it won’t work. Heaven is never going to care.”

“I think you’re confusing this with your own situation,” Gabriel said. “My power is not at risk. Hell might be a place of cutthroat competition, but my power is innate and immutable.”

“You really believe that?” Beelzebub sneered. “You think it’s easy to do assignments on Earth and lead Heaven at the same time? I guarantee you, they’re already looking for your replacement.”

He briefly thought of Aziraphale, his incompetent assistant, who would now be stationed in his office for a few more centuries while Gabriel worked on this new assignment. He shook his head. Aziraphale didn’t have that kind of ambition. He wouldn’t try to take over Gabriel’s position. 

“What about you,  _ Lord _ Beelzebub?” Gabriel said, using their title like a shield, deflecting their attacks back onto them. “Are you on the verge of getting replaced?” 

He meant in Hell’s leadership, but he also meant in his own life. Whatever they’d had for the last two thousand years, it was ending now, and he’d have to fill the empty space it left behind. 

“I’ve been trying to win favor again. I thought, sabotaging an Archangel, that’s bound to make me look bad enough to stay in power, right? It didn’t work, but nothing would have come of it anyway.” They yelled in frustration, “Why can’t you see that the same is true for you, too?”

“You’re wrong,” Gabriel said. “You don’t know anything.”

“I remember what Heaven is like. They’ll wear you away into dust, and never give you anything in return for it!” Beelzebub screamed, their ragged voice cutting through the noise of the wind, now that the storm was fully upon them. 

“You think I’m overworked? If I didn’t know you better, I would think that sounded like you cared about me,” Gabriel accused.

Beelzebub huffed. “Good thing you know me better,” they retorted, trudging off into the storm. The sand quickly obscured their figure from his sight.  At least they agreed on something. He  _ did _ know them. Or at least, he thought he did. One confession weighed heavily against two millennia of what he thought was an unlikely friendship, what he thought had meant something to them too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so far I'm keeping up with a weekly update schedule! yay!
> 
> next chapter title: There Aren't Any Right People


	4. There Aren't Any Right People

Gabriel’s next big assignment, the revelation of the Quran, went off without a hitch, without any interference from Beelzebub. He didn’t see much of them at all. Their similar positions still necessitated them showing up in the same place on multiple occasions, but when they did meet, Beelzebub was standoffish and cold. Gone was the playful spirit who had breezed into his life in Rome, and so many times before.

He didn’t know why he missed them. They had never been there for his company, always just looking for information. They were a distraction, bringing chaos and mischief wherever they went, and now that they had gone their separate ways, he should have been able to accomplish even more than before. Instead, he spent his downtime between assignments wandering among the humans, searching for anything that could spark that same excitement.

He spent enough time with Muhammad that he considered him something of a friend, and the people who followed him were interesting enough. Still, there was only so much that humans with their finite lifespans could understand, and other angels couldn’t relate to the circumstances of his life on Earth. He began to worry that the demon he was better off without was also the only friend he would ever have.

When a new assignment fell into his lap, he immediately didn’t like the sound of it. He was to go undercover as a knight so that he could lead armies in a Crusade. A holy war, to take back land from the same people Gabriel had guided not too many centuries earlier. It didn’t matter to head office that Gabriel had ties to both the Christians and the Muslims. All that mattered to them was that the humans were pious, and if their faith motivated them to start a war, then Gabriel was supposed to help them do it.

He could hear Beelzebub’s snide voice in his head, as if the little fly-like demon had become a devil on his shoulder. _That hardly sounds like an angelic thing to do._ Beelzebub sometimes seemed to have a better idea of what was and wasn’t angelic than did his own assignments that supposedly came from on high. 

Gabriel shoved the doubts out of his mind and dutifully carried out his assignment, but those doubts always bubbled back to the surface when he saw the atrocities the crusaders were committing, justifying it in the name of God. He hoped that by staying with them, he could influence them to be more merciful, even though all he ever got for it was more blood and dirt smeared on his face.

His hopes were proven wrong at the siege of Jerusalem. The crusaders stormed the city and massacred as many inhabitants as they could find. Gabriel followed alongside them, desperate for some way to stop the slaughter.

A woman cowered in the shade of a shopping stall. Gabriel hesitated in front of the stall, shielding her from view of the street, and met her eyes with a pleading look that urged, _Get out of here._ The crowd streamed past behind him, and someone shoved him in the back, hard; he stumbled on his feet and grunted in pain, but didn’t look away. 

The woman let out a piercing shriek, and fled through the curtains in the back of the stall.

He looked down, and saw the sword jutting out of his chest, buried to its hilt in his back. The humans would only see red blood, but to his eyes, the blade was coated in golden angelic ichor. It retracted back with a horrendous squelching sound. 

He placed his hand over the wound on his chest. He could heal it with a miracle, if only he could focus, but the pain and the cacophony of the crowd rattled his mind. It would only take a moment--

Another blade pierced his back. Then another. He stayed on his feet more out of shock than endurance, until a slash to the back of his calves brought him to the ground. He didn’t see his attackers, didn’t bother to tell them that he was on their side, because he wasn’t even sure if he was anymore. 

He didn’t have the strength to heal his wounds all at once. He would bleed out before he could heal them individually. He could only lie there, soaking the cobblestone, his vision blurring in the summer heat.

When humans died in the siege, they probably thought of Heaven in their last moments. Gabriel did too, but not in the same way they did. He thought of the discorporation forms that he’d have to fill out, many of which he had designed himself. He thought of the unfinished items on his agenda and how he’d have to account for not having done them. He thought of never being allowed back on Earth again after such a catastrophic failure.

He thought of Beelzebub. 

Maybe that thought had conjured a specter from his mind, because a dark figure came into his field of vision. When their shadow fell over him and shielded him from the blazing sun, he realized that he wasn’t imagining things. His head was tilted up an an awkward angle where he had collapsed, and although his eyes had gone out of focus, he could make out the round face hovering over him. They were crying.

“Gabriel, you idiot!” Their voice sounded broken. Tears streamed down their cheeks. Hands pressed against his back, a sharp pain at first, then joined by searing heat. At first, he thought they were trying to finish him off, which was what he would expect a demon to do upon finding a wounded angel. Then, he realized that they were cauterizing his wounds.

They were healing him.

He didn’t even know demonic magic could be capable of healing. It was only meant to be used for destruction. But he could feel the tissues of his body knitting back together, even as their power burned him, like molten metal poured in to seal the cracks in a mold. They couldn’t see his eyes from where they were positioned above his back, couldn’t know except by the relaxing of his muscles under their hands that it was working. He didn’t know if it would be enough to keep him from discorporating, but the pain had started to subside. 

He had expected them to taunt him, about how Heaven was responsible for cruelty again, about how humans would always be awful to each other no matter which side gave them the excuse. Nothing could have prepared him for the next words that fell from their mouth, so quietly, as if they didn't expect him to hear.

“I’m sorry.”

Gabriel had waited for a thousand years, hopeful that he would someday hear those words, but resigned to the fact that they would never come. Demons did not apologize, but Beelzebub was not a typical demon. They had healed his body. It wasn’t such a stretch to believe that they wanted to heal their friendship, too.

He wanted to say something in answer, but before he could summon his voice in his parched throat, Beelzebub rose from their knees and ran off in the opposite direction. 

Experimentally, he curled his fingers. His body was responding to him again. He wasn’t discorporated, and he felt like he was going to make it. 

So it came as a surprise to him when he felt the sharp, unmistakable tug of heavenly power pulling his ethereal core out of his body and dragging him up Above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter takes place during the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099, and is brought to you by Wikipedia. this is probably about the most historical we're going to get.
> 
> big thank you to [Arka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arka_r/pseuds/Aziraphales) for motivation and [Revasnaslan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revasnaslan/pseuds/Revasnaslan) for historical discussion
> 
> I'm trying to write the next chapter sooner than usual! We're in the midst of a long stretch of Gabriel's POV, and then after chapter 5 it's going to be a long stretch of Beelzebub's POV.
> 
> Next chapter title: Extraordinary Amounts of Alcohol


	5. Extraordinary Amounts of Alcohol

_ “You have failed in your holy mission, Gabriel.” Michael’s voice was crisp and clear, cutting through the quiet of Heaven’s spacious office, slicing into him like a knife. _

_ “I wouldn’t say it was a failure. The crusaders won,” Gabriel said carefully. Taking credit for things the humans did on their own was the oldest trick in the book, but he hoped that Michael wouldn’t see through him.  _

_ “Yes, but you were supposed to be leading them. Not sparing locals and then almost getting yourself discorporated.” Her glare chilled him even more than the cold air of the upper atmosphere. “I think you’ve spent too long on Earth, and lost sight of the greater goal. Armageddon is less than a thousand years away, you know.” _

_ “So you’re pulling me off the Earth assignment?” he asked. He had seen this coming, long before he had taken on the Crusade. He had set a precedent for it himself in the first days of the planet’s existence. If his time on Earth was up, he only regretted that he wouldn’t see Beelzebub again after their last confusing interaction. Maybe he could set up an interdepartmental meeting. _

_ “On the contrary. There has been talk among the Archangels about stationing you on Earth permanently, and giving your former position to someone more focused.” She trailed her fingers along the desk behind her. “This incident is proof that you are not making optimal use of your powers of leadership in your missions on Earth. As of today, you are stripped of your title.” _

Just like that, Gabriel was demoted. After everything he had done, after every assignment he had faithfully carried out, after every doubt he had swallowed down, he had still been thrown away as if he was worthless.

Beelzebub was right. It was never going to be enough. He was never going to be enough.

It wasn’t the inviting wave of the lantern flame above the door that drew him to the tavern in the quaint Irish countryside. It was the thread of demonic power that he knew how to follow as if it were a lifeline, the only promise of familiarity that he could cling to when the ground had fallen out from underneath him. He felt pathetic for falling back into their orbit again, after he had stayed away for so long. Just one act of compassion had shattered his resolve. But every time he had sought them out, they had proven that they would always be there for him to find.

He pushed open the door to the tavern, and found the sole patron hunched over their drink. The squeak of the hinges caught their attention, and they sat up and turned to him.

“New body?” Beelzebub asked, their eyes traveling up and down his form in a way that made him feel exposed.

“No, it’s the same one,” Gabriel answered. The scars on his back remained, but Heaven had thought that his body was serviceable enough to send him back to Earth in it. Something about having a shortage of bodies with all the wars going on. He felt a twinge of gratitude toward Beelzebub for saving him from yet another bureaucratic headache. “I suppose I should say thank you.”

“Don’t,” Beelzebub snapped, picking up their mug and taking a gulp of beer, then slamming it back down on the counter.

“What were you doing there, during the siege?” Gabriel asked. He pulled out a stool to their right and sat down next to them at the bar.

“You know, the usual. Tempting humans to loot and pillage. Easy stuff, really.” They took another, more measured sip of their drink. “Not the kind of thing any demon is going to screw up, right?”

“Did you… screw it up?” Gabriel probed. Beelzebub wasn’t usually this forthcoming with information, but it seemed like the alcohol had already loosened their lips.

“I bloody healed an angel, didn’t I?” Beelzebub responded. “Not exactly something you can explain away on the miracle reports. I got demoted.”

Gabriel did a double take. “You did?”

“Yup. So if you’re here to gloat, you know exactly where to shove it.”

“I wouldn’t gloat. I would never do such a thing,” Gabriel insisted. He rolled his lip into his mouth and bit down on it. He had wanted to keep his shame a secret from Beelzebub, to let them keep thinking that he was still an important Archangel and that they ought not to mess with him. Now, he didn’t see them as a potential enemy, but as another being in the same situation, and he decided that it was time to tell them. “Actually, I… got demoted too.”

Beelzebub spat out their mouthful of beer and jolted so far back that they almost fell off their bar stool. “You what?!”

“You’re surprised?” Gabriel asked, their shock an unexpected balm to his wounded pride. 

“Well, yeah,” Beelzebub said. “What did you get demoted for? You always did everything you were supposed to do.”

“Apparently, Michael didn’t think so,” Gabriel sighed. “She said I’ve lost sight of the greater goal, and rather than  _ telling me _ about those concerns, she just cut me out without warning.” Recounting it felt like taking hold of the blade still embedded in his chest and twisting it deeper. The injustice of it was so incongruous with what Heaven was meant to be that he didn’t want to believe it had really happened. 

“And after all that stuff you said about immutable power,” Beelzebub murmured. “I guess that didn’t work out so well for you, Ar…”

Gabriel braced himself. Their favorite nickname for him was always teasing, always making a mockery of his title. Now, it wasn’t even his title anymore. He had shown them his weak spot and given them the opportunity to strike. They didn’t take it.

“...Arsehole,” they finished.

Even though it was still an insult, it felt like mercy. Gabriel hadn’t expected them to give him that. Then again, there was a lot they had given him recently that he didn’t expect. 

One question still lingered on his tongue.  _ Why did you do it?  _ If healing him was a great enough offense to get them demoted, why had they taken that risk? But he had a sense that Beelzebub would sooner descend back into Hell than answer that question, so he kept it pinned behind his lips. 

The tavern keeper walked up on the other side of the bar from them and asked Beelzebub, “Something for your, um… friend?”

“No, thanks, I don’t sully the temple of my body with--”

“Don’t be weird,” Beelzebub hissed. Then, they turned to the portly woman and said, “Yes. Two more.”

Once the human was out of earshot, Gabriel said, “I will not debase myself with gross matter. Especially not the kind that induces intoxication.”

“This is what humans do to cope with circumstances they can’t control,” Beelzebub said. “Don’t you think you could use a little of that, Not-an-Archangel?”

A hint of a smile tugged on the corners of Beelzebub’s lips, and they were using that singsong voice that they put on when they were trying to tempt him. When they did that, he could almost pretend that they were back in the old days, before they had ever had that fight, when their relationship was as uncomplicated as it was possible for one between an angel and a demon to be. 

Beelzebub had apologized, and even more surprisingly, Gabriel found within his heart the readiness to forgive. Angels were made to forgive, but that forgiveness was not supposed to be extended to demons. Even though he might be foolish to trust a demon and let them take advantage of him again, he wanted to believe that they really meant it this time.

“Fine,” Gabriel acquiesced. “I’ll try a sip. But just one.”

When the tavern keeper placed their drinks on the bar, Gabriel picked up his mug and took a sip… and immediately spat it back out. “Bleh! What is that?” he sputtered. “It tastes rotten.”

“It is. It’s fermented. Rot with a purpose,” Beelzebub explained, taking a leisurely sip of their own drink. 

“I can see why you like it, then,” Gabriel muttered. 

“If you don’t like the taste, you can chug it,” Beelzebub said. “Like this.” They picked up their mug and placed it against their lips, tilted it back, and downed it all in one gulp.

“Uh… okay.” Gabriel used both of his hands to steady the full mug and hold it to his mouth. It burned as it went down his throat, and a few stray drops of it ran down his chin. When he set down the empty mug, Beelzebub looked up at him with a proud smile.

“How does that feel?” they asked.

All he felt was a pounding in his head, and the lingering sting of the taste in his mouth. “Is it supposed to work that quickly?” he said with a shudder.

“Maybe not. Your body’s bigger than mine, so it takes longer. You probably just need more.” Before he could object, they had already ordered another round.

Alcohol didn’t lighten the burden of his demotion. It only served to corrode the fragile walls he had built up around his despair. Two drinks in, he was teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. 

“I just don’t understand it,” he almost sobbed. He held his head in his hands, his elbows propped up on the bar. “I’m supposed to be the Archangel Gabriel. What am I supposed to do now, go back and correct all the scriptures?”

Beelzebub’s hand came to rest upon his shoulder, light and tentative as a bird, and patted him awkwardly. “Tell me about it,” they groaned. “I used to be a Prince of Hell. Now I’m not even a local councilor.”

“And you know who they got to replace me?” Gabriel sniffed. “Aziraphale. They said they wanted someone more focused, and then they picked the angel who lost his flaming sword.”

“No way. My office is getting taken over by Crowley,” Beelzebub said. “The serpent who never turns in any of his reports on time.”

“Sounds like we both really screwed this up, if they think those two can do a better job than us,” Gabriel complained.

“But you didn’t Fall, did you?” they said. The unspoken words that followed hung heavily in the air between them.  _ Not like I did. _

“No,” he conceded. His connection to Heaven remained intact, although it was little comfort to him now.

“So they can’t be all that disappointed in you.” Beelzebub took another sip of what was probably their fourth drink since he’d walked into the tavern. What they’d said earlier about body size making a difference didn’t seem to be borne out, since tiny Beelzebub looked much less affected by the alcohol than Gabriel felt. “You know what I think of trying to impress Heaven. It’s not worth it.”

Panic cut through his drunken haze, a delayed reaction to their topic of conversation. “Wait, you don’t think I’m going to Fall for this, do you?”

“For drinking? Pfft, no,” Beelzebub snorted. “I bet your new boss does it all the time.”

Right. Aziraphale was Gabriel’s new boss. The thought made him want to curl up and disappear, so he folded his arms on top of the counter and tucked his head down on top of them. 

“Although you might fall flat on your face, if all it takes is two drinks to get you maudlin drunk,” Beelzebub quipped. “Is that really all you can handle?”

Gabriel peeked up from the cushion of his arms, and saw Beelzebub’s lip curled into a taunting smirk. “Are you challenging me?”

“Maybe. I just think you haven’t drunk enough to drown your sorrows yet.” The handle of another mug nudged his forearm. “It won’t help, in the long run, but it’s not like anything else will, either.”

Gabriel reluctantly raised his head from the table, felt it spin as he pushed himself back upright. He curled his unsteady hand around the mug. “I guess it’s us against the world now, isn't it?”

Beelzebub pushed their mug across the bar and clinked it against his. “I’ll drink to that,” they said wanly. Gabriel took a long sip, and as his clarity ebbed away, so too did some of the misery.

~

“We’re closed. Time to go.” The tavern keeper’s voice was warm, but firm.

“You hear that? Finish your drink,” Beelzebub said, elbowing Gabriel in the arm.

He stared down at his mug like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. He seemed to have forgotten how to drink from it. Beelzebub hadn’t been keeping track of how many drinks they’d had, but they were pretty sure Gabriel had surpassed them by this point. Which was concerning, because they had built up a tolerance over centuries of debauchery, whereas he had no experience and it showed.

“Or don’t. Come on.” Beelzebub hopped down from their stool, swayed slightly on their feet, and then held out their hand to Gabriel. He looked at it with just as much confusion as he did at the rest of his surroundings. They grabbed his elbow and tugged him along with them. He would have tripped over his own feet trying to stand if it weren’t for Beelzebub draping his arm around their shoulders. 

_ How many times am I going to have to save you from yourself? _

Beelzebub hadn’t known what had come over them when they healed him during the siege. They knew he would be fine if he discorporated. What they hadn’t known was whether he would come back.

That was more emotion than they cared to entertain at the moment. With their free hand, they snapped their fingers and sobered up. 

They stepped outside into the cool night air. The tavern was set in the side of a hill that had been carved out. A wall made of stones, its edge level with the slope of the hill, kept the earth from sliding back into place. They sat down atop the wall where it bordered the grass, side by side again. 

Beelzebub tensed up when they felt Gabriel’s head come down to rest upon their shoulder. They wanted to say something scathing. “You all right?” came out of their mouth instead.

“I’m fine. Never been better,” he declared with drunken confidence.

Beelzebub regarded him doubtfully. “You know that you can sober up, right?”

“Huh?” he said.

Hell below, he really didn’t know. He had never gotten drunk before, so he didn’t know that he could undo it with a miracle, either. “You know, just snap your fingers and do a miracle.”

Gabriel snapped his fingers, but without the intent behind it, nothing happened. He giggled at the noise, and relaxed further against Beelzebub’s side.

“You’re warm,” Gabriel murmured.

What was he on about? “You’re cold and clammy, like a drunk person. Get off me.” They tried to shove him in the arm, but froze when they met Gabriel’s eyes, half-lidded and so  _ trusting. _

“What are you doing?” Beelzebub said. Gabriel’s eyes slipped closed. “Gabriel?” He leaned closer, his lips parted slightly. “Oh, fuck.” He wasn’t going to like this, but it was their only option. 

Beelzebub snapped their fingers again. Gabriel flinched back from them, and then curled up with his head between his knees as the alcohol left his body all at once. 

When he recovered, he sat up ramrod straight, the same Gabriel as ever. “What did you just do to me?” he said suspiciously.

“I sobered you up,” Beelzebub said. “It’s less unpleasant if you do it yourself, but since you didn’t know how, I did it for you. You should be thanking me, not acting like I poisoned you.”

“You did poison me. You made me drink that stuff,” Gabriel accused. 

“Oh, shut it. You agreed to it,” Beelzebub argued. “Besides, I got it out of you just now, didn’t I?”

“I suppose so.” Gabriel tilted his head back and forth, getting used to his restored sense of balance. They leaned over and searched his eyes for any recollection of what had almost transpired, but any traces of that vulnerable expression had been subsumed under Gabriel’s veneer of perfect professionalism. 

“It’s getting late,” he said. “I should get going.”

“Where? There’s nowhere else to go,” Beelzebub said. They leaned back and lay down on the hill, their legs dangling over the edge of the wall. 

A moment later, Gabriel joined them. Their backs against the grass, they stared up at the stars in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I jinxed it. That's the last time I promise a fast update. My Gabriel muse was fighting me on this one. He really, really did not want to drink gross matter. XD


	6. Frivolous Miracles

Gabriel didn’t show any indication that he remembered what he had almost done while he was drunk, so Beelzebub had decided not to remember it, either. 

They didn’t think about what would have happened if they hadn’t sobered him up. If he had really been about to kiss them, if they would have let him. If they would have kissed him back, if they would have liked it. If the alcohol had made him behave strangely, or if it had lowered his inhibitions and opened the gates to something sincere.

No, Beelzebub didn’t have time to think about things like that. They were far too busy with their projects. Getting demoted hadn’t meant an end to their Hellish duties, just a shift in their focus, one that they found they liked the longer they spent in their new position. They no longer had to worry about managing unruly subordinates, and instead had more time to put together intricate temptations. They missed the power of being a Prince, but they didn’t miss the burden of responsibility. 

If their satisfaction with their role on Earth had anything to do with spending more time with Gabriel, then that was just another thing that they were pointedly not thinking about.

Beelzebub also preferred to do as little work as possible whenever they could get away with it. Many of the temptations they had received commendations for were actually just humans being their awful selves, written up in a report as if Beelzebub had given them the idea. That was the kind of project they were working on when they stood in a square in Paris amidst a crowd of revolutionaries, watching the guillotine blade fall down on the necks of aristocrats.

One particularly overdressed gentleman was marched up to the platform by a pair of burly guards. He didn’t seem to have the refined mannerisms of an aristocrat, but he was dressed like one, from the powdered wig to the knee breeches. His coat and waistcoat were shiny mauve brocade, so opulent that even Beelzebub could tell he was committing a serious faux pas by wearing that in the current political climate. “Look at this idiot, arrested for fashion crimes,” Beelzebub snickered to themselves under their breath.

The guards pushed the man down into the stocks, and he turned his face toward the crowd for the first time. Beelzebub’s stomach dropped. They would recognize that jawline anywhere. They knew that idiot. 

Beelzebub pushed through the crowd to get closer. Surely Gabriel wouldn’t just let himself get executed. He had to have a plan. 

They reached the third row back from the platform, and he met their eyes in the crowd. He  _ winked _ at them. 

Beelzebub groaned. Rescuing Gabriel might as well be their part-time job. 

They drew their fingers upward, and time stopped. They clambered up onto the platform and pulled Gabriel out of the stocks. “Come on, there’s a back alley this way, and everyone’s distracted by the execution. Let’s go,” they urged. 

“You could at least say hello first,” Gabriel said as Beelzebub tugged on his elbow.

Before they set time back into motion, they positioned the executioner in Gabriel’s stead under the guillotine. Whether the guards noticed in time to get him out or not, the ensuing chaos would be enough that Beelzebub could write it up as the reason for the miracle, without explaining in more detail what else they had done during the time stop. Beelzebub had gotten more careful about covering their tracks since their demotion. Once they had taken care of that, they led Gabriel down the stairs and into the alley. They released their hold on reality, and the screams of the crowd filled their ears again.

Beelzebub’s shoulders sagged from the exertion of such a large-scale miracle. Gabriel, standing in front of the shop wall across from them, looked utterly unperturbed, despite being whisked out of a near-death situation. He even had the gall to say, “Thank you. That was very nice of you.” 

Beelzebub grabbed him by the ridiculous frilly cravat sticking out of his collar and shoved him against the shop wall. “Do  _ not _ say that,” they growled through gritted teeth. They had to stand on their tiptoes to keep their hold on his collar, their nose nearly brushing his chin. Being that close to Gabriel’s face was not conducive to focused thinking, so Beelzebub let go of him and stumbled back, brushing themselves off. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were supposed to be in America, helping them set up their new country or whatever.”

“I was,” Gabriel said. “But I heard that they inspired another revolution over here, so I came to check it out.”

“Dressed like that?” Beelzebub said bluntly.

“I like the clothes,” Gabriel said with a sheepish shrug.

“Well, those clothes are going to get you killed,” retorted Beelzebub. “Miracle yourself a new outfit.”

“I don’t believe in doing frivolous miracles,” Gabriel said.

Beelzebub rolled their eyes. “Not even to save your life?”

“Not if I don’t have to. Besides, this is a fine outfit. If you had any fashion sense, you’d be able to appreciate it,” he said, casting a critical eye over Beelzebub’s all-black ensemble.

Gabriel had a point. He certainly didn’t look  _ bad _ . Beelzebub was having a harder time tearing their eyes away from him than they would like to admit. When they found themselves getting lost in the dip of his throat behind the ruffle of lace, they averted their gaze downward, only to catch sight of the skin-tight breeches outlining the curves of his thighs. This was exactly why he needed to change that outfit. 

“At least take this off, so you don’t look quite so conspicuous,” Beelzebub said. They reached up to his head, pulled off the powdered wig, and shoved it into his hands. 

“Hey!” he shouted. His short brown hair underneath was tousled from the abrupt removal, which did the opposite of solving the problem that he was too distracting. 

“You look better with your real hair, anyway,” Beelzebub said without thinking.

Gabriel’s face broke out into a broad grin. “You think so? Thanks!”

Had they really just complimented him? Oh well, it was the truth. And this time, he was allowed to say thank you. 

“If you’re going to insist on wearing that, let’s at least get out of the city,” Beelzebub said, walking briskly down the alley. Gabriel’s long strides caught up with them easily. 

They passed by a cafe with outdoor tables, deserted in the commotion of the execution taking place down the street. Beelzebub stopped in front of a table and peered curiously at the plate of crepes on it. It had barely a bite taken out of it, and was still warm, as if whoever had ordered it had left in a hurry. The fork placed neatly on the edge of the plate, and the chair aligned parallel to the table, made it look like the previous patron had disappeared into thin air. 

Whoever had abandoned perfectly good crepes like that, Beelzebub doubted they would miss them. They picked up the plate and fork, and took both with them as they walked down the street. 

They speared a piece of crepe on the fork and held it out to Gabriel. “Want some?” they asked.

“Eww, no, gross,” Gabriel said, making a face. “Where did you even get that? Did you steal it?”

“No one was eating it, so it’s not stealing,” Beelzebub insisted, sticking the fork into their mouth.

“That’s even more disgusting,” remarked Gabriel.

“Look, you might not share my passion for secondhand food,” Beelzebub said through a mouthful of crepe. “But there must be a food you like, somewhere in this world, and I’m going to find it.”

“Don’t waste your effort,” Gabriel said. “I don’t consume gross matter.”

“That’s not true,” Beelzebub teased. “You did get drunk with me.”

“That was  _ one time, _ ” Gabriel said, holding up his index finger for emphasis.

“No one ever tries it only once,” Beelzebub pressed on against their better judgment.

“Once was more than enough for me. I’m never doing that again, not after I…” He trailed off. Beelzebub tried not to stare too much and reveal how desperately they were hanging on his next words, but he didn’t finish his thought.

They had danced too close to the edge by bringing up that moment. There was no way he remembered--he had been way too drunk--but maybe the reminder had stirred some abstract imprint of an emotion in him, some ghost of a memory that he couldn’t quite grasp. Beelzebub didn’t want to find out what he would do if he managed to pull it out of the ether.

“All right, fine, I’ll back off about the alcohol.” It was a promise to themselves as much as it was to him. They had already gotten themselves into enough trouble for Gabriel. They couldn’t take the risk of breaking open the lid on dangerous feelings that were meant to stay simmering under the surface. “I will get you to try food, though.”

“No, you won’t,” Gabriel insisted, and they lapsed into their comfortable, familiar language of bickering. 

Whatever Gabriel remembered about that night, Beelzebub resolved not to think about it again until the end of the world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter title: You Go Too Fast For Me
> 
> >:)


	7. You Go Too Fast For Me

The world was ending.

Not in the Armageddon sense. Not in the great war between Heaven and Hell sense. But for the humans cowering in the London underground tunnels under an endless rain of bombs, it might as well have been. 

Beelzebub wandered through the tunnels, attempting a few minor temptations here and there, but all had failed. They left chocolate bars in conspicuous places on the ground, hoping that the starving humans would fight over them, but the children that found them always took them back to share with their families instead. Beelzebub couldn’t help but feel like they were losing their touch.

They hated to admit it, but they were distracted. The mental space they had carved out for  _ not thinking about Gabriel  _ had become devoted solely to  _ thinking about Gabriel, _ and it had consumed their entire mind. Even here, in what ought to be a fertile ground for demonic activity, they couldn’t escape it. 

They were just beginning to scrape together some focus when they heard a loud, American-accented voice from around the bend of the tunnel, the familiar cadence carrying over the noise of the crowd.  _ Oh no. Not here. _

They ducked into an alcove behind a pipe and peered around the corner. Sure enough, there was Gabriel in a dove-gray suit, talking to a shorter man in a hat. He glanced in their direction, and made a motion to excuse himself from the conversation. 

Beelzebub pressed their back against the wall, their breath coming in short gasps. Hiding wasn’t going to work. They turned and walked in the opposite direction, picking their way over the legs of people sprawled out on the ground, hoping to lose him in the crowd. 

Heavy footsteps echoed down the tunnel, closing in on them. They jolted when a hand came down upon their shoulder. “So this is where you’ve disappeared to,” Gabriel whispered, leaning down to bring his face closer to their ear.

Beelzebub shrugged his hand off, and attempted to ignore him by quickening their pace. In a few steps, he was in front of them again, his long legs moving faster than they could keep up. “You’re not even supposed to be here,” said Beelzebub. “America hasn’t gotten into the war yet.”

“I am an angel foremost, not an American,” Gabriel replied, pedantically. “Wherever people are in need, that’s where I will be.”

“Shut up,” Beelzebub groaned. The bounce in his step as he walked ahead of them grated on their nerves. “What are you in such a good mood about?”

“It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” said Gabriel, glancing around at the people packed into the makeshift bomb shelter. “Even in the most horrific circumstances, they cling to each other and make their own light in the darkness. Every cloud has a silver lining.”

“Not always,” said Beelzebub. “Sometimes the sky is nothing but dark clouds from horizon to horizon.”

“You would think that, being a demon,” Gabriel quipped. “But as an angel, it's my job to find the place where the sun breaks through the clouds.”

Beelzebub turned and started up the stairwell to the surface in an attempt to sneak out of the interaction while he wasn’t looking. Gabriel followed them up the stairs, soon passing them again. “We can’t keep having this same conversation over and over, Gabriel,” they sighed.

“What do you mean we can’t?” he asked. 

“You lecturing me about the greater good isn’t going to redeem me or whatever you think it’s going to do,” Beelzebub said in exasperation, leaning against the railing. “I’m what you’d call a lost cause.”

“That’s not…” Gabriel said quietly. The frown on his face was the one that appeared whenever he reluctantly admitted that Beelzebub was right. “What brought all this on? You’re being moody, even for you.”

“Gabriel, I’m getting a promotion,” Beelzebub blurted. “I’m going back to Hell tomorrow.”

“A promotion?” he repeated in disbelief, turning around to face Beelzebub as they stepped out of the stairwell and onto the street. “Says who?”

“Dagon, Lord of the Files,” Beelzebub said. They gestured to the crumbling city around them. “She admired my work.”

“This is  _ your _ work?” Gabriel asked, with an accusatory glare.

“I never said it was,” said Beelzebub. “Just that I took credit for it.”

“Wait, wait,” Gabriel interrupted. “Okay, so you didn’t do this, but you intentionally made them think you did. But you’re going back to Hell? Why would you want that?”

“It’s not a matter of what I want,” Beelzebub insisted. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t. Can’t you turn down the promotion, tell them you’re needed here on Earth?” Gabriel’s lower lip quivered. “I don’t understand why you have to leave.” His voice broke ever so slightly on the last word.

“It’s the Great Plan, Gabriel,” they said, rolling his once oft-repeated words around in their mouth like they were backwash from a dirty cup.

They didn’t tell him the truth behind why they had been avoiding him. It was because they knew this feeling all too well, the feeling of falling, of standing too close to the flame. No matter where they went on Earth, he always seemed to draw them back in again, so they turned to the only place they had left to run where he couldn’t follow them. 

They knew what had happened to them the last time they had given in to something they knew was dangerous. Only this time, they had no idea what lay on the other side. Hell had already made it clear what they thought of Beelzebub associating with an angel, and they could do even worse than a demotion if they saw fit. Or Gabriel could be the one punished, or he could turn his back on them when he realized that they were beyond saving. He always strode ahead with such certainty, seemingly unaware of the risks he was taking. The last thing Beelzebub wanted was to face the world without him, so they had to choose that fate for themselves, before it was forced upon them. 

The screech of a siren pierced the sky overhead, warning of an incoming bomb. 

“We can figure something out so that you can stay. Right now, we need to run.” He held out his hand, palm turned upward.

Beelzebub’s traitorous hand inched toward his, before they pulled it back. Gabriel’s fingers curled in a beckoning motion, pleading for them to take his hand, and they wanted to, but they didn’t,  _ couldn’t _ make that choice. They stared up into his eyes.

“You go too fast for me, Gabriel.”

Beelzebub turned on their heel and walked away. “Beelzebub, no!” Gabriel screamed, but the sound was lost in the explosion. 

~

When the ringing in their ears had stopped, they could hear Gabriel calling out to them still. 

“Beelzebub!” His raw, desperate cries drew closer, along with his footsteps scrabbling over the flaming wreckage. He must have narrowly escaped the range of the blast, while Beelzebub had been right in the center of it, and ended up trapped under a toppled building. 

“Beelzebub, where are you? I can’t find you!”

Beelzebub wanted to scream back at him, to tell him to leave them alone and get out of the ruins before something else collapsed, but their lungs were crushed by the slab of rubble pinning their body to the ground, so they had no breath left to speak. 

It hurt. Satan, someone, it hurt. The damage was too extensive to heal with a miracle, and they counted down the seconds until they discorporated. 

Only their hand extended out from the rubble, turning cold as the stones around it as their circulation gave out. Now more than ever, they wished they had taken Gabriel’s hand. His warm hand curling around their own would be their last anchor to the physical world before they slipped back into Hell. 

His screams sounded farther and farther away as they lost their grip on their earthly body. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any short person who has ever tried to walk with a tall person knows this is literal. anyway hope you enjoyed the angstiest chapter!
> 
> next chapter title: Wherever You Are, I'll Come To You


	8. Wherever You Are, I’ll Come to You

“There you go. Just sign here, and it’s all yours,” said the real estate agent, holding out the clipboard while Gabriel signed his human name.

An angel signing a contract. He knew someone who would appreciate the irony of that. But this wasn’t a demonic contract, just a human one, designating him as the new owner of a tailor shop in downtown Los Angeles. 

He looked up at the storefront with his hands placed on his hips, admiring the way his sign brightened up the worn exterior. Ever since his nearly fatal fashion disaster in revolutionary France, Gabriel had taken up the hobby of sewing and fashion design, by miracle and by hand. It wasn’t enough to be a consumer of fine fashion; he wanted to take part in the creation of it. The meticulous nature of it calmed him, and after honing the craft for a century and a half, he was finally ready to share his gift with the world. 

He  _ should _ have felt a sense of pride welling up in his chest, but as always, it was tempered by grief. Ten years had passed since he lost Beelzebub. At first, he had thrown himself into his work, both Heavenly assignments and earthly projects, to pass the time until they returned. They had said their goodbyes, and they were planning to leave anyway, but the way that they had left this world felt unfinished. He was constantly on alert to feel the tug of their power, to see their shadow lurking around a corner just like always.

He told himself that ten years was nothing for an immortal being. He had gone centuries without seeing them before, but that was long ago, before they had become as close as they were in recent years. Before they had both gotten demoted, before they had become the only beings in the world who understood each other.

Ten years had left him with a dull, aching reminder that they were never coming back. He thought of it as a human sort of grief, the sort that would likely be felt by beings for whom death was not just a temporary inconvenient discorporation. Once he had come to terms with that feeling, he decided to cope with it the human way, and distract himself from it. Hence the tailor shop.

Over the years, Gabriel’s shop developed a reputation as an urban legend in Los Angeles, due to the fact that it was always open. There was no reason for a tailor shop to be open 24 hours, but it had never occurred to Gabriel that there was any reason for it  _ not _ to be. He understood that humans needed things like  _ lunch breaks _ and  _ sleep _ , and that was why most of the stores he frequented had regular opening hours, but Gabriel didn’t need those things, so his store didn’t need to close unless he was out performing miracles or running errands.

Most of the people who came into the store at night only did so to use the bathroom, also an unnecessary accommodation for its angelic inhabitant. But occasionally he would get clients who would talk to him about the intricacies of fashion, and sometimes faith and loss and love, who had more time to pour their heart out to him than they would have if they had gone to a typical bustling tailor shop in the daytime. Those were the nights that he needed the most.

There hadn’t been any customers like that in a while. Gabriel paced the shop for about the twentieth time that night, before returning to the back room.

There was a twin-size mattress on the floor of the back room that had been there since Gabriel moved in, a relic of the previous inhabitant. His appreciation for asceticism had led him to keep it, although his need for cleanliness had compelled him to miracle it back into like-new condition.

Some nights, the grief felt heavier, like a physical weight on his body. He lay down on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling in the dark. 

He hadn’t been able to save them. So many times, they had come to his rescue, and the one time he had a chance to protect them in return, he had failed. And now they were gone. 

He hadn’t had the mental focus to miracle them safe when they walked right into the blast. But he could have grabbed their hand before they turned away. He could have picked them up over his shoulder and carried them to safety. He could have done it. Why hadn’t he done it?

Because that would be a violation of Beelzebub’s agency, and would break the trust they had in him that he had worked so hard to build. At least, he had thought that he had their trust. Evidence suggested otherwise. They hadn’t taken his hand and let him lead them out of danger. Instead, he had found their body in the rubble, and held their hand as they died.

He had pushed them too far by expecting that trust. Every time he thought they were getting close, Beelzebub pushed him away again. They seemed afraid, but of what, he didn’t know. If they ever came back, all he wanted was to be a safe place for them to land.

A tear formed in the corner of his eye, one that he didn’t notice was there until it trickled down the side of his face. He wiped it away and closed his eyes. He might have fallen asleep, for hours or for days, he couldn’t tell. He woke up to the chime of the bell over the door.

He was grateful that he had left the sign turned to  _ open, _ so that he didn’t have to be left alone with his thoughts for too long. 

~

Once they had returned to Hell, Beelzebub had gone from buried under a mound of rubble to buried under an even bigger mound of paperwork. If they wanted to return to Earth, they would have to get in the back of the discorporation line and wait for a new body. The queue was even longer than usual due to World War II, and current estimates put the new body wait time at 100 years, just a few decades past the end of the world. There was a rumor that one could get into a body sooner if they had a recommendation from the Prince of Hell himself, but Lord Crowley had seemed rather distracted lately, not showing up to any of Hell’s pointless all-hands meetings. 

Beelzebub had resigned themselves to shuffling papers for the rest of their existence until it was time to fight in the war. Working in Dagon’s file room meant sorting through an endless stream of mostly useless fliers, faxes, mailers, and forms. The work was mindless, which was the real torture of it. It gave their thoughts time to wander, and they always drifted back to Gabriel.

They wondered what he was doing, if he was still traipsing around Earth doing sanctimonious good deeds, or if he had gone back to Heaven to prepare for the war. They wondered if he ever thought of them too, but they doubted it. He was always so busy, and he had probably moved on by now.

The fax machine screeched, and Beelzebub waited expectantly for it to spit out another document that was at least 50 pages long and all in the wrong order. What slipped out, to their surprise, was a single sheet of paper. They turned it over, and furrowed their brows as they read the words on the page.

_ My Dear, _

_ I am deeply sorry that I missed you last time I was on Earth. The crepes were scrumptious. I think you would have liked them. Unfortunately, the revolutionaries who rudely interrupted my lunch didn’t seem to appreciate my choice of dress. I do have standards. I had to pop on back to Heaven in a jiffy to avoid getting discorporated, but I can promise you that if we ever find ourselves on Earth at the same time again, I will come to you wherever you are, and we will be together at last. _

_ With all my love,  _

_ Your Angel. _

_ P. S. I have finally figured out the new-fangled “fax machine!” It shall do nicely for our clandestine correspondences. _

Once they were done dry heaving from the disgusting sappiness, Beelzebub read it again for the information it contained. Apparently, they weren’t the only demon in contact with an idiot angel who had gotten themselves in trouble for fashion crimes during the French Revolution. The circumstances were so specific, in fact, that they imagined for a brief moment that it was Gabriel writing to them. They shook their head. Gabriel would never write such flowery prose or address them as  _ my dear, _ and he certainly wouldn’t give such a glowing review of crepes. And he wasn’t  _ their _ angel. 

They were about to throw it in the incinerator when a wave of demonic power sent a shudder through their being. They ducked behind the fax machine to hide.

Lord Crowley stalked into the room, frantically scanning the piles of papers. He found the inbox that Beelzebub had spent the past several hours sorting and started digging through it. “Where is it, where is it,” he muttered.

“Looking for this?” Beelzebub said, stepping out from behind the fax machine. They held up the letter, pinched between their thumb and forefinger.

“Yes,” Crowley said, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Now give it to me.” 

“Hmm, I don’t know,” they said, immediately reverting to the demonic instinct of making deals. “What’s in it for me?”

“Really? You want to make a deal about this?” Crowley tried to lunge across the table and grab it from them, but Beelzebub used their small size to their advantage and crouched down out of his grasp. “Fine. What do you want?”

“Give me my body back, and I’ll give you this letter,” Beelzebub’s mouth said before their mind even had a moment to think about it.

“That’s it? All right, sure,” he agreed. Beelzebub rose up from behind the table and held out the letter, and Crowley snatched it from their hand. “Meet me at the escalator tomorrow morning.”

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Beelzebub called after him as he rushed out of the room.

So Crowley was the “my dear” addressed in the letter. If Crowley himself was doing it, maybe fraternizing with angels wasn’t as frowned upon as it had been back when Beelzebub had gotten demoted for it. If they got caught spending time with Gabriel, and the news made its way back to Crowley, maybe he would just shrug it off. They wondered what angel had been stupid enough to fall in love with him.

Whoever they were, they could only be the second stupidest angel in Heaven. 

~

Beelzebub materialized on the street in a city that was definitely not London. The buildings were different. The cars were different. The fashions of the crowds walking by were different. Beelzebub hoped that not too much time had passed since they got discorporated. 

Beelzebub strolled down the street aimlessly for a few minutes until they walked past a storefront that made them stop in their tracks. The sign read  _ Gabriel Angelis & Co. Fine Tailors.  _

One eyebrow quirked up on Beelzebub’s face as they pushed open the door and stepped inside. 

The bell over the door rang, signaling the arrival of a customer to the otherwise deserted shop. Their shoes clacked against the linoleum as they approached a rack of suits, picking up the cuff of one to examine it. “So this is what you’ve been up to,” they murmured.

“I’ll be right with you,” a familiar voice called out from the back room. The rack of suits behind the counter rustled, and from it emerged Gabriel, who seemed preoccupied with adjusting one of the suits on its hanger. When he looked up, his purple eyes grew wide and his jaw went slack with shock. “Beelzebub?”

He opened the gate at the side of the counter, and in a few long steps he crossed the floor to Beelzebub, who flinched at his sudden approach. His arms reached towards them ever so slightly before he pulled them back, folding his hands in front of him as he straightened at the waist. He clearly hoped that Beelzebub wouldn't notice that little aborted movement, but they did, eyes flicking to his hands and then back up to his face. 

“How did you find me?” he asked. 

“Your name on the sign made it obvious. Never one for subtlety, were you?” said Beelzebub.

“I thought you were gone,” Gabriel said. The weight of those words was written in the lines under his eyes. 

“That’s the thing about being immortal. I got temporarily discorporated, but it doesn’t last forever,” Beelzebub said with barely concealed irritation, as if they were explaining a simple concept to a particularly dense intern.

“No, I know that. I mean, I thought you were getting a promotion back in Hell. I didn’t think you were ever coming back.”

“Wasn’t much of a promotion, really. Just sorting through a bunch of paperwork.” Beelzebub lowered their head and hid their face behind their bangs, suppressing a smile. They had been dreading coming back to find that he had returned to Heaven, and that they would be alone in the world without him. They hadn’t expected him to wait for them.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Gabriel said. He didn’t seem to catch on to their emotions, which was a relief. 

“And what about you? This is what you’re doing with your life these days? A tailor shop, really?” Beelzebub jabbed.

“I like clothes,” Gabriel admitted with a shrug. “Plus, I had to find something to do with my time, since, well… there’s not much for an angel to do on Earth without a demon around to thwart.”

Beelzebub found it amusing that Gabriel considered their interactions  _ thwarting _ . The most they ever did to thwart each other was waste each other’s time. But something else about that statement clicked in Beelzebub’s mind. It sounded like Gabriel had to occupy himself without them for a while.

“Gabriel, what year is it? How long have I been gone?”

Gabriel wrung his hands, like that was an uncomfortable question for him to answer. “It’s 1962. You’ve been gone for over twenty years.”

Beelzebub usually wasn’t one for apologizing, not to Gabriel’s face at least, and it certainly wasn’t their fault that they got stuck in Hell dealing with bureaucracy. Still, staring at Gabriel’s pitiful expression,  _ I’m sorry _ was the only phrase their brain supplied. They bit it back until they thought of something else, and they were struck by the intense desire to flee. “Well, then, I must have a lot of catching up to do. Havoc to wreak, and so on. See you later.” 

“Right, then. See you,” Gabriel echoed, as Beelzebub turned and walked out the door, the bell clattering behind them. 

They replayed the interaction in their head as they hurried down the sidewalk. When Gabriel had stepped towards them holding his arms out, he was going for a hug. His first instinct when he saw them for the first time in twenty years was to hug them. If Beelzebub was being honest, they wanted that too, someday, but they weren’t ready yet. He had realized that in the moment, and stopped himself. 

The sheer amount of respect that Gabriel had shown them stirred something in Beelzebub’s chest, something that terrified them and made them run out the door. 

He had waited for them. Maybe they didn’t need to run away anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will take a little longer, as I don't have any of it written yet. next chapter title: Go Off Together


	9. Go Off Together

Gabriel had been into jogging for as long as it had been a trend. When it caught on in the 1960s, he dove in headfirst, tracksuits and all, and wished the humans had come up with it sooner. Nearly fifty years later, it was still one of his favorite hobbies. He liked pushing the limits of his physical body. He liked the power of solitude and fresh air to clear his head when nothing else could. Most of all, he liked the kind of human he was perceived as when he went jogging early in the morning. That was the kind of person who had his life together. Not one who was falling apart at the seams, as he was now. 

The Apocalypse was coming.

_ Aziraphale sat at the desk that had once been Gabriel’s, his hands folded on top of it. “I have it on… reliable intelligence,” he said, his eyes flitting away for a moment, “that the demon lord Crowley has brought the Antichrist to Earth.” _

_ “What? Already?” Gabriel said, slamming his hands down on the other side of the desk. Aziraphale flinched. “And what do you expect me to do about it?” _

_ “I’m afraid there is nothing we can do,” Aziraphale murmured. “I’m not consulted on policy decisions.” _

_ “But we’re not ready for the great war.” Gabriel couldn’t say what he really meant, which was that  _ he _ wasn’t ready, not ready to let go of Earth, not ready to face down the hordes of demons on the battlefield. Or one demon in particular. “Isn’t there something you can do?” he asked, but his voice trailed off when Aziraphale shook his head.  _

_ “If I could ask you one favor, Gabriel,” he said, his eyes gone steely in the cold light of Heaven, “it is that you do what I would do if I were in your position.” _

Gabriel’s feet pounded against the pavement as he wondered what Aziraphale had meant by that. He probably only wanted to encourage Gabriel to look forward to the upcoming war with a fighting spirit, as had been the norm among the Archangels back when Gabriel was still one of them, but that advice was useless to him now. Aziraphale was a more hands-off manager than Gabriel himself had been, which made him easy to deal with, except when Gabriel actually needed his help. 

The world was ending, and once it did, Heaven and Hell were going to war. The Gabriel who had once zealously awaited the chance to snuff out evil with his own hands would be disturbed to find how far his priorities had shifted. Since then, he had gotten to know a playful, irreverent little demon, who kept coming back into his life again and again, and if it came down to himself and Beelzebub, he wouldn’t have it in him to strike that final blow.

Maybe he was flattering himself by thinking he would even have to make that choice. Beelzebub was a formidable warrior in their own right. It could just as well happen that they would have him on the ground with their boot on his chest and their blade poised over his throat. It could be that they would plunge it in without hesitation, and watch the life leave his eyes with a sadistic smile on their face. 

Or maybe they would hold back. Maybe they would throw their blade aside and throw their arms around him instead. 

No, that one was definitely an unrealistic fantasy. Then they would both be destroyed.

Gabriel couldn’t run away from his problems by jogging around the trails at Griffith Park, but he did run into the source of his moral dilemma. In the blue pre-dawn light, he saw a dark shape that turned out to be Beelzebub, slumped on a bench.

“Never took you for an early riser,” Gabriel remarked, stretching his arms above his head as he stopped in front of them.

“Do I look like an early riser to you?” Beelzebub scoffed. “I’ve been here all night. Not that it makes any difference when you don’t even sleep.”

“I do, sometimes. Sometimes I just meditate. It’s nice to get into the rhythm of a daily routine,” Gabriel said defensively.

“Is that what you’re doing out here, running around like a madman? Wearing that?” They giggled and bit their lip as they eyed his tracksuit, a half-smirk tugging up one corner of their mouth. It occurred to him that this might be the first time in the modern era that Beelzebub had ever seen him dressed in anything less than a suit, and their appraising gaze made him feel strangely vulnerable. Still, they had no business making fun of his outfit when they were wearing an oversized sweatshirt that looked like they had dug it out of a dumpster. 

Gabriel sat down beside them and glanced at the litter surrounding the bench, beer bottles that matched the one in Beelzebub’s hand. “I take it you heard the bad news?” he guessed.

“You mean that my boss delivered the Antichrist, and in a few years, the Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse are coming to raze everything to dust?” Beelzebub said, taking the last sip of their bottle before tossing it on the ground with the others. “Yeah, I heard.”

Gabriel furrowed his brows at the bottle. “Pollution’s one of them,” he said. “You don’t need to make their job any easier.” He could feel Beelzebub rolling their eyes at the back of his skull as he got up from the bench, picked up the bottle, and walked it over to the recycling bin. 

“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. It’s already happening,” Beelzebub sighed. 

Gabriel sat back down and looked out at the sun blazing over the horizon, its rays lighting the undersides of the clouds with golden fire. He turned his head toward Beelzebub. “Do you think you’ll miss it?” he asked. 

Beelzebub stared straight ahead, their face cast in a light pink glow by the sunrise. “What, Earth? Nah,” they muttered. “I never cared for this blasted planet, anyway.” They curled their legs up to their chest, pulling the hem of the sweatshirt out so that it covered their knees, and then folded their arms on top of them. The garment engulfed them, and the position made them look even smaller than they were. If he didn’t know them better, he might think they looked delicate and in need of protection.

Gabriel realized that he might not be able to stop the Apocalypse or the war, but that didn’t mean he had to hurt the one being he cared about most. If he could keep them safe, the rest of the world could burn and he wouldn’t even look back. “We could leave early, if you want,” he said.

“Huh?” they said. 

“The world, I mean. If it’s all going up in flames anyway, we could get out of here,” he continued. He laid himself bare before them, and hoped that they wouldn’t reject the implication, that they were his world now, and he didn’t intend to go anywhere without them. “I’m not sure how far we’d have to run, but we could go to another galaxy…” 

“What are you talking about?” Beelzebub asked, unfolding themselves from their compact posture on the bench. Their piercing blue eyes shone with clarity that hadn’t been there a moment ago, a sign that they had done the subtle miracle of sobering up. “You want to give up that easily?”

“You were just talking about giving up,” Gabriel pointed out. 

“Yeah, but I’m a pessimist. You’re supposed to be the one who encourages everyone to ‘keep their chin up,’” they said, making a sarcastic motion of pumping their fist. “I have to do everything myself, don’t I?”

Gabriel smiled, touched by their impression of his optimistic nature, even if it was teasing. “You want to do something about it, then? What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll figure something out,” Beelzebub said. They stretched their hands out in front of them with all the excitement of a demon hatching a plot. “It all starts with the Antichrist, right? So if we kill the Antichrist, problem solved. That means we have to find him first, but I have a plan…” 

Gabriel listened intently, his confidence renewed by the strength of Beelzebub’s conviction. Between the both of them, they could find a way out of this. They knew what they were doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final Chapter Tomorrow! Chapter title: The Great Plan's Ineffable (or, How to Make an Entrance)


	10. The Great Plan's Ineffable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want everyone to know that as I'm posting this, there's a thunderstorm going on outside... Welcome to the apocalypse!

They did not know what they were doing.

Beelzebub and Gabriel had not managed to find the Antichrist. Beelzebub’s plan had been to use their clearance for Dagon’s file room, which had never been terminated after they snuck back to Earth, to dig through the files and find out where Crowley had put him. They had a lead which they followed for a few years on a celebrity’s son living in Beverly Hills, but they soon figured out that he was not the Antichrist, just a regular human spoiled brat, which they both agreed was even worse. After that, they spent most of their time together brainstorming ideas, Beelzebub drinking and Gabriel quietly judging them for it, pretending they had plenty of time to think of something else.

The Apocalypse snuck up on them.

Now, the sky had turned the sickly pink of a painful sunburn where it wasn’t bruised black with storm clouds, and poured down more rain than Los Angeles had likely seen in the past century combined. Beelzebub stood outside Gabriel’s shop, shivering in the downpour and the wind, their arms wrapped tightly around their chest.

When Gabriel stumbled out the door, Beelzebub shouted at him, “I told you we didn’t have it under control!”

“Something’s wrong. This can’t be part of the Great Plan,” said Gabriel.

“It is the Great Plan. And there isn’t a thing we can do to stop it,” insisted Beelzebub, raising their voice over the wind. “Face it, Gabriel. The Great Plan  _ fucking sucks! _ ” 

“No, no, I can feel it. This isn’t what was supposed to happen. Something went off course somewhere,” Gabriel muttered. He ran a hand through his hair that was already sticking to his forehead from the rain. “Think back, try to remember if you’ve ever interfered with the Great Plan.”

Realization dawned in Beelzebub’s eyes. “The Garden of Eden,” they said. “We stopped those two from meeting. The demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale.”

“We were just doing our jobs,” said Gabriel. “We didn’t even know who they were.”

“But now they’re a Prince of Hell and an Archangel, and the second most powerful beings in Heaven and Hell,” Beelzebub reminded him. “They must have something to do with all this.”

“Oh my God, I think you’re right,” Gabriel said, making them cringe at the invocation. “I knew we shouldn’t have interfered!” 

“Interfering was your idea!” Beelzebub yelled.

“We can argue about whose fault it was later,” said Gabriel, which they knew meant that it was his fault, but he would never admit it. “But if we can bring them together now, maybe it will reverse whatever we messed up back then, and everything will go back to normal.”

“That’s ridiculous. Gabriel, you’re being ridiculous,” Beelzebub said, stumbling as an earthquake rolled beneath their feet.

“Do you have a better idea?” Gabriel asked.

A frown stretched across Beelzebub’s thin lips, and they looked away.

“Go back to your head office and get your boss, and meet me back here in thirty minutes. This is our last chance to stop Armageddon, and it’s as good a plan as any.” 

They walked in opposite directions, and Beelzebub stomped on the ground, preparing it to open up and take them back to Hell. “And one more thing,” Gabriel called out to them. Beelzebub looked over their shoulder.

“They’re not likely to be in a very good mood, what with all this going on,” he said, waving his hand vaguely above his head at everything around them. “So, uh… be careful.”

“Tch,” Beelzebub scoffed. Then, they glanced out of the corner of their eyes to meet Gabriel’s gaze for an instant, and mumbled, “...You too.” 

Flashing a satisfied grin, Gabriel summoned a bolt of lightning to draw him back up to Heaven. 

~

Beelzebub got back to the surface first, thanks to Lord Crowley’s chariot, which was modeled after a human luxury car, except that it was one hundred percent covered in infernal flame. Once the car emerged from the depths of Hell and parked on the street, Beelzebub’s first challenge was to uncurl their hands from their white-knuckle grip on the back seat cushions. Then, they staggered out of the back seat, and crumpled to their hands and knees on the pavement. They spared a moment to kiss the ground before getting back up. 

Beelzebub bowed as they opened the driver’s side door, and Crowley swung his legs out of the seat. His snakeskin shoes hit the asphalt with a  _ clack _ , and he sauntered out of the car. His hair billowed out behind him, as flaming red as the car itself, cascading in waves down to his waist between his obsidian wings. 

“All right, what is it you’ve summoned me for, Beelzebub?” Crowley demanded, adjusting the dark glasses that covered his eyes. “I was just in the middle of a relaxing bath.”

“Just wait a minute,” Beelzebub growled through gritted teeth.

Lightning struck the pavement, and Gabriel emerged from it, alone, unharmed. Beelzebub wasn’t sure why relief flooded through their chest upon noticing that particular detail. It transformed into panic when he swayed like a willow branch in the wind, and fainted. 

Beelzebub ran to him. They couldn’t rein in the instinct that pulled them to Gabriel’s side, or the hand that went out to help him up. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and reached out to them. “The proximity to his power was too much for me to handle,” he said through shuddering breaths. “Something’s different about them this time.”

“Where is he?” Beelzebub hissed, because if they didn’t, something like “ _ are you okay?”  _ might come out of their mouth. Once they had pulled Gabriel to his feet, his hand lingered in theirs. 

“He’s on his way,” Gabriel answered. “Brace yourself.” 

Beelzebub did just that, and tightened their grip on Gabriel’s hand.

He shielded his eyes with his arm as a beam of blinding light cut through the clouds. Ethereal shapes began to outline themselves in the light, dozens of wings and hundreds of blue eyes. The incomprehensible visions blurred together and merged into something more recognizable, that eventually coalesced into a single pair of white wings extending out from the back of a rather amiable-looking angel. His hands were folded in front of his stomach, and he was dressed in a ruffled outfit that looked like he had been to Earth at least once, some two hundred years ago, and figured that fashion hadn’t changed a bit since then. The energy emanating from him was warm, almost inviting, but humming with a power that was definitely not to be underestimated. 

The rain in their immediate surroundings stopped, as if the auras of Aziraphale and Crowley had created a bubble around them, an eye of the storm. Beelzebub realized that they still felt warmth against their palm, and shoved Gabriel’s hand away, but they couldn't ignore the tingling feeling that remained after the contact was broken. 

Beelzebub bowed as they announced, "Lord Crowley, Prince of Hell..."

"...Meet Archangel Aziraphale," Gabriel completed the introduction.

When the two beings’ eyes met, a spark of recognition lit up both of their faces. "I do believe we’ve met before," Aziraphale said.

"Have we? I don't think I've ever seen you before," Crowley said. "Yet you do look familiar, somehow."

"We must have crossed paths at some point," said Aziraphale. "Oh, it's going to bother me if I can't remember where it was."

"Eh, who knows. It's not as if I pay any attention when Heaven and Hell have their centennial office mixers," Crowley remarked. He turned to Beelzebub. "Anyway, what was all this about?"

"The end of the world," said Beelzebub. 

"Yes, hmm, that's supposed to be happening right about now, isn't it?" Crowley mused. He checked his fancy human-made watch. "Running a few minutes behind schedule, even. That's unusual."

"Well, that's what we wanted to talk to you about," Gabriel chimed in, clapping his hands together. "We believe something may have gone off course with the Great Plan."

“What are you doing? Don’t tell them that!” Beelzebub whispered under their breath.

“At least I’m doing something,” he replied.

Aziraphale seemed to ponder Gabriel’s words for a moment. “While I’m sure it’s possible that something could have gone amiss with the Great Plan,” he said, “it would only be a small part of the overall  _ ineffable _ plan.”

“Er… what?” Gabriel cast a desperate glance at Beelzebub, as if he were drowning and begging them to throw him a life preserver, but they were just as confused as he was. They returned his gaze with a baffled shrug.

“Ineffable,” Crowley repeated. “That’s not the first time I’ve heard that. You angels say that a lot, do you?”

“No. I think I’m rather the only one,” Aziraphale said, wringing his hands nervously. “No one ever took me seriously when I said it, so I’m not sure where you might have heard it before…” 

Crowley regarded Aziraphale with curiosity, which morphed into wide-eyed wonder. “Angel?”

The same expression lit up Aziraphale’s face, so bright that he actually began to radiate a heavenly glow. “My dear?”

Beelzebub got the distinct impression that “angel” was not just a species descriptor, and “my dear” was not just an overly twee general endearment. They remembered the letter that they had used to bargain with Crowley, and it all fell into place. 

Crowley and Aziraphale ran into each other’s arms, and it seemed like everything else in the world became irrelevant. 

“You were the one sending the letters?” Aziraphale said in an ecstatic rush. “So when you told me that Crowley was bringing the Antichrist to Earth, you were talking about yourself in the third person!”

“Yeah. I didn’t want you to find out who I was. At first because I thought I would get in trouble for it, and then because I thought you wouldn’t love me anymore when you found out I was a demon lord,” Crowley said, tilting his chin down bashfully. “I’m sorry. Can you forgive me for hiding this from you?”

“I think I’m the one who owes you an apology,” Aziraphale admitted. “In all those letters we exchanged over thousands of years, since the first time your Eden report fell onto my desk by accident, I promised you that I would meet you on Earth, but it never worked out for us to be in the same place at the same time.”

“Until now,” Crowley said with a smile, caressing the side of Aziraphale’s face. “No better opportunity than the present to make up for lost time. We can explore all those places that we never got a chance to, all those restaurants you told me about--” 

“I think you’re both missing something important here,” Gabriel interrupted. “Which is that  _ the world is still ending. _ ”

“There’s not going to  _ be _ a world for you to do all those things unless you  _ fix it now! _ ” Beelzebub yelled to support his point.

Aziraphale glanced over at them, then looked up at Crowley, his face softening with a pleading pout. “I suppose we had better do something about that, then, my dear. My dear Crowley.”

“Sure thing, angel,” Crowley agreed.

He leaned his forehead against Aziraphale’s, and the two were bathed in a halo of light. Energy rippled out from them in powerful pulses, with greater force than the gales and earthquakes of Armageddon. Barely able to stay on their feet, Beelzebub reached for Gabriel’s hand again. He held it fast, held them steady as reality shook apart and reformed around them.

When Crowley and Aziraphale drew apart, still holding both of each other’s hands, the glow was gone. The energy radiating from them was neither angelic nor demonic, but mingled together into something Other, something entirely their own.

“You two, go back to doing whatever it was you were doing.” Crowley waved his hand dismissively at Beelzebub and Gabriel, before turning back to Aziraphale. “My angel and I have some important business to attend to.”

Beelzebub and Gabriel didn’t even notice that they were being ignored by the two beings of unfathomable power until they were looking at the backs of their wings as they wandered off down the sidewalk, hand in hand. Their wings flickered in and out of existence, until the two figures looked almost human. 

Beelzebub rubbed their eyes. “Have they always been like that?” they asked. 

“As far as I know,” Gabriel replied. 

Both of them got the impression that the universe had been created just so that those two beings could be together, and that this so-called ineffable plan had to have a whole cabinet of files devoted to making sure they did exactly that. Despite Beelzebub and Gabriel’s meddling in Eden, they found their way back to each other, and all was right with the universe again. 

Beelzebub looked up at the sky, and noticed that it was clear and blue.

“I think we did it,” said Gabriel. He held up his hand as if to salute, except the palm was facing Beelzebub. 

“What are you doing?” Beelzebub asked, pointing to his hand.

“It’s a high five,” he replied. “It’s a human greeting, used for victory celebrations. I figure if we’re going to be living among them for a while longer, we might as well practice their customs.”

With a skeptical raise of their eyebrow, Beelzebub lifted up their hand next to his.

Gabriel’s hand made contact with Beelzebub’s, then seized it in his grasp and pulled it back behind their head. Beelzebub hadn’t spent a lot of time observing humans, but was fairly certain that was not how a high five was supposed to go. Gabriel’s other arm looped around behind them, supporting the small of their back as he dipped them. They stuck one leg out for balance while teetering precariously on the other. Even as their muscles trembled from holding the awkward position, they felt safe in Gabriel’s arms.

They grabbed onto Gabriel's scarf to steady themselves, yanking his face devastatingly close to their own. Gabriel pressed his lips against theirs. His kiss was soft yet insistent, the culmination of six thousand years of wanting, compressed by the touch of their lips into one moment of finally  _ having. _ Beelzebub closed their eyes and melted into the kiss, dragging their teeth against Gabriel’s lower lip as he pulled away. 

“On second thought, I think I prefer  _ that _ form of human greeting a lot more,” Gabriel said, his violet eyes blazing with passion, his red bitten lips curling into a smirk. 

Beelzebub’s tongue felt too big and clumsy in their mouth, probably out of its desire to be in Gabriel’s mouth. When they regained the ability to speak, they said, “I can’t bring myself to hate you right now.” 

“Awww, Beelzebub,” Gabriel said. He threw his arms around them and swept them up into a hug, squeezing them so tight that their feet lifted off the ground, before setting them back down. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

That made Beelzebub’s cheeks burn hotter than hellfire. "Shut up! I’m not nice!" they stammered, crossing their arms and turning away from Gabriel, making a show of storming off. 

Gabriel fell into step beside them. He slowed his long strides to keep pace with them, which did not go unnoticed. A smile crept onto Beelzebub's face.

“So, my plan worked,” Gabriel bragged loudly. “I’ll let you pick the next one. What do you want to do now?”

“Something that involves extraordinary quantities of greasy food,” Beelzebub said, their unpracticed smile shifting into the familiar pattern of a wicked grin. When Gabriel made a face, Beelzebub pointed out, “You did say you were letting me pick.”

Beelzebub led the way into a trendy establishment that was modeled after an old-fashioned American diner, and sat down at one of the booths. When the waitress came by to take their drink order, Beelzebub ordered a milkshake, and then went back to pondering how much of the menu they wanted to eat at once.

“Do you ever think that we did it all backwards?” Gabriel mused. “That maybe Aziraphale and Crowley were supposed to be on Earth instead of us?” 

“What do you mean by that?” Beelzebub said, looking up from the menu.

“They were the ones who were stationed here in the first place, after all,” Gabriel said. “Maybe if we hadn’t messed with them, we wouldn’t even have gotten demoted.”

Beelzebub imagined sitting in their dreary office in Hell, festering in their bitterness, after working towards the Apocalypse for six thousand years only to take the blame when it didn’t happen. They would much rather be here, sitting across from the most beautiful idiot in the universe, than have some stupid title.

“You know I’ve never been one for following rules,” said Beelzebub. “I think that regardless of what was supposed to happen, we made it so that it would work out this way.”

Gabriel smiled, not the thousand-watt grin that he usually wore, but a gentler, more tentative thing, that felt like it was meant for Beelzebub alone. “Yeah. I think maybe you’re right.”

The waitress set the milkshake down in front of Beelzebub, and they admired it like a work of art. The chocolate-dipped rim of the glass was rolled in candy, it was piled high with whipped cream and sprinkles, and the cherry on top tied the masterpiece together. They were just about to savor the first sip when they were distracted by the movement of Gabriel’s hand reaching across the table. His smile was still genuine, but now it had a mischievous edge to it. He pinched the cherry stem between his fingers and drew it back across the table, placed the cherry on his tongue and closed his lips around it, and pulled the stem out of his mouth with a pop.

Beelzebub just sat there, staring at him in shock, until he opened his mouth again to speak. “What, you’re not going to lunge across the table and strangle me?”

“Do you  _ want _ me to do that?” Beelzebub teased.

“No, I--I just mean… you’re not mad at me for stealing your food?”

“Of course I’m not mad. I’m excited. You just ate something for the first time in your entire existence,” Beelzebub said. They had been trying to get him to take a bite of food for at least two thousand years, and now that they had saved the world together, he had finally done it. And the way he had eaten that cherry was so blatantly seductive that Beelzebub wasn’t sure how they hadn’t discorporated already. “It is the first time, right? You haven’t been holding out on me?”

“Nope. First time. Angel’s promise,” Gabriel said. 

Beelzebub let out a quiet breath in awe. “Well? Did you like it?”

He smacked his lips together, revisiting the taste. “Better than beer, for sure.”

Beelzebub laughed. “Right. You only have one other thing to compare it to. We need to get to work on expanding your palate right away.” They pulled another menu out of the holder on the side of the table and flopped it open in front of him.

“Hey! I didn’t say I was ready for that!” Gabriel protested.

“Too late. You’ve already broken the ‘gross matter’ barrier,” Beelzebub said, grinning. “One cherry is hardly enough for a meal.”

“All right, fine.” Gabriel looked down at the menu. “What is… salad?”

“Of  _ course _ you would go for salad,” Beelzebub groaned, but their tone was only fond. 

The two of them laughed, and ate, and thought about kissing again, and then eventually did kiss again. They walked back to Gabriel’s shop with the sense that they had been a part of something bigger than themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What really happened with the Apocalypse: Crowley still switched the babies, and Adam Young was still the Antichrist. Thousands of miles away, a professional descendant witch and her technologically inept one-night-stand averted nuclear world war, and a ragtag bunch of kids that included the Antichrist himself faced down the Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse and Satan all on their own. Aziraphale and Crowley’s shared miracle did help everything go over smoothly, but other than that, Beelzebub and Gabriel had absolutely nothing to do with it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is all [Arka's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arka_r/pseuds/Aziraphales) fault. In August 2019, I had a dream about Ineffable Bureaucracy swapping places with Aziraphale and Crowley and being the ones tasked with saving the world. I was only going to write chapter 1, chapter 10, and a brief summary of their time together in between. But then I shared this idea with Arka and he wanted to collab, encouraged me to write more scenes, and did the [amazing art!](https://arkadraws.tumblr.com/post/626610816744079360/commission-for-the-final-chapter-of-us-against-the)
> 
> Others who have done this concept before (and better):  
> [Ineffable Rivalry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235832/chapters/47957824) by cyankelpie (fic)   
> [Worst Omens](https://airitree.tumblr.com/post/187830166185/to-the-world-worst-omens-au-fast-forwarding) by airitree (art)   
> If you know one that should be credited in this list, let me know!
> 
> The separate epilogue fic, All the Time in the World, is coming soon, because why not write fanfic for my own fanfic? Warning, it is going to be rated Explicit, in case that’s not your thing, or you're a minor who's been following this T-rated fic. If you do want to get a notification when I post it, please subscribe to the series!


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